This invention relates to casings used for ham and sausage, into which the meats are packed, and whose outer edges are bonded with clips. The meats in the casings are heat-stererized in heated water, and wrinkles in the casings disappear. A printed face on the casings raised three-dimensionally at the same time.
Animal intestines were used in the past for directly casing and sealing ham or sausage. Plastic films such as vinyliden chloride or heat shrinkage nylon have been used, however, in recent years. As the traditional sealing means in this type of casing, one edge of the casing formed into a cylindrical shape is bonded by a clip while the meat is packed from the other edge and this edge is also bonded by a clip. The meat in the casing is then converted into a product through a smoking, heating or sterilizing process. As a remainder of the era when animal intestines, especially in the case of hams, where use, and a configuration of strings was engaged on the outside of the casing to bind it, it is popular to print casings with a string design around the external surface of the casing. In this type of printing, however, even if the expression of the pattern can surely be satisfied, it is difficult to attain the state where a string is actually bound, or the casing namely the state where the string is raised three-dimensionally, from the casing surface, and this it is in the current situation that this method still fails to express the actual physical feeling of the string. Therefore, an alternative method is available, as shown in FIG. 5, where heat foamed ink 02 is printed onto the surface of casing 01 so as to attain the cubic feeling by means of the foamed effect of this ink, but in this case, the foamed ink appears directly on the surface, and hence the printing effect not only is decreased by wear, discoloration or water absorption, but also can not be utilized, as it is, with ham and sausage that needs to be heat-sterilized, together with their casings, in heated water.
Also, in case of the animal intestines, the unique flexibility and elasticity being offered by this animal intestine act with each other in a favorable manner and the sealing becomes perfect when it is bonded by a clip but in case of the casing made of plastic film, the seal width in the vertical direction in forming it to a casing, gets thicker and there is such an event that the sealing becomes imperfect due to the appearance of unevenness in its flexibility.